Fire and the Rose
by Kuramastrass
Summary: Fire destroys. Destruction provides its sustenance. It kills to survive. But fire is not always the enemy. For some, it is their friend. It may burn and destroy, but it also provides warmth, light, and hope. And fire whispered to the rose, "I love you."


**This is a one-shot I wrote in honor of Nathaniel Hawthorne. (We were reading The Scarlet Letter at the time, see. I tried to write it in a style like his... I tried to put so much symbolism in here you guys would puke. Ugh. If I hear anything else about Pearl being her mother's conscience, even after all this time, I'll explode.)**

**I don't own YuYu Hakusho.**

**If you notice, I never say Hiei's lover's name. But if you know _ANYTHING_ about YYH, then you'll know who it is. See, I submitted this to my school's literary magazine... and it was bad enough that I used Hiei's name. But at least it fit...**

**The theme for this year's magazine was "Masquerade of Words". I think I was just about the only person who wrote on the theme. The reason I wrote my entry as a fanfiction, and not an entirely original piece, was because of one of the choices in the vote for the theme. It was my first choice, actually. It sounded like a fanfiction waiting to happen.**

**Fire and the Rose.**

**So, I started writing it. When I found out the winning theme, I worked it in. And here it is.**

**And I won a prize for it! Honorable Mention for the theme. Kickass. I got a paperweight, too. Yay! But they smushed it all together... all my careful paragraphing... Ah well. Anyone interested in seeing how it came out? I can post a second chapter with the magazine's format.**

**So now, for your reading and viewing pleasure, here's "Fire and the Rose". Review, please!**

Fire. It destroys. It consumes everything around it. Destruction provides its sustenance.

Fire kills to survive.

He, too, had killed to survive. The world as he had come to know it was not a pleasant place. Within days of his birth he was abandoned – thrown from the mountaintop home of his people, actually. Even at that age, if he had not killed, he would not have survived.

He was so young, seemingly so weak. Others had tried to kill him, even at a few days old, thinking that because he was weak, he did not deserve to live. It was survival of the fittest: the strongest taking out the weak. That plan had backfired for all of them.

He had been born with the ability to control the element of fire. It was strange, considering that his people generally had control over the element ice. They had gained that ability through generations of living on their icy, frozen mountaintop. They lived on that mountaintop to live in a world of seclusion, a world without men.

His people had somehow learned to reproduce asexually; that was helpful, considering their utter disgust of men. Every twenty years or so, one of them would give birth to a child. And the child was always a girl.

But he was the living proof that they could still reproduce like any other species; he was the living proof that their secluded, frozen world was not the perfect utopia that they craved.

Men would occasionally attempt the journey to this place for a glimpse of the women; they were said to be very beautiful. However, very few survived. It was a long trip, full of dangers: deadly ice, bitter winds, temperatures constantly below zero. They had found the bodies of so many that had failed, they no longer buried them. They were thrown from the mountaintop.

Only someone with control of the element fire or ice would have a chance at making this journey. And one day, one did: a gorgeous male of the element fire.

He stayed away from the village, knowing that they wouldn't take kindly to his presence there. But that same day, a beautiful young woman wandered a distance from the village. She was alone, and intrigued by him. She had never seen a man before. She had been born in the village.

Months later, when she gave birth, no one thought anything of it at first. But then word got out that she had given birth to _twins_, something that was unheard of. Even worse, upon closer inspection, one of them was a _boy_.

"This boy of fire will destroy us all," the village elders declared. He was days old, but surrounded by such intense flames that they had to wrap him in a sacred cloth. The only way to save the village, they said, would be to throw him from the mountain like the other men.

When he was a few years older, having successfully survived, he was adopted by a group of bandits. And then, for the first time, he was given a name. It was a fitting name, a name his mother would have approved of: _Hiei_.

For in their language, _hi_ is the word for _fire_.

The bandits who'd adopted him eventually grew tired of his almost endless killings. They were _thieves_, not murderers. They shunned him, and again he was alone. Just like when a fire has consumed all that there is, it is extinguished.

He had become fire personified.

He had control over the element fire, and like fire, he destroyed to survive. If he didn't, he would be extinguished, which was what his own people had attempted to do to him so long ago. They had tried to extinguish him to keep their village from being destroyed. Even his name, Hiei, was a thing of fire.

The only thing left for him to do was to _become_ fire.

He continued his killing, and he began to take pleasure in it. Now, for him, killing was _not_ just about survival. Killing was his recreation, his way to relax.

But that changed the day Hiei met _him_. He hadn't killed once since then.

"Hiei..."

His name was whispered, soft, barely audible. It was a confession, a request, and a plea all in one.

Hiei glanced over at his lover; red eyes met green ones.

It was an odd combination that the two of them made; they were such an unlikely pair. In the path of destruction that he had created, a path of burning death, he had left only one thing standing. It was the strangest thing, something that should _never_ have survived his flames.

While Hiei was fire, his lover was a rose.

His long hair was blood red, and his eyes a stunning emerald green. He looked so feminine, so delicate, so breakable – like something that would easily snap under the slightest pressure.

But he was stronger than that. The controller of plants had survived his intense flames – like roses have thorns for protection, he _also_ had ways of protecting himself. But he had his weaknesses, too.

And so far, the only one Hiei could name was himself.

There was nothing in the world more important to him than his lover, his living rose. But it was hard for him to be so close to anyone. First he was thrown from his mountaintop home, and then he was shunned by the bandits that had adopted him. He had learned to keep to himself, to do whatever it took to survive, and not to trust people.

Yet the redhead had found his way into Hiei's heart and had stuck there like a rose's thorn in his side.

Hiei didn't answer his lover's call, though that wasn't entirely unexpected. He rarely spoke if he could avoid it. Another thing he had learned was to keep his feelings to himself. He was constantly watching everything he did, everything he said, to make sure he never revealed his true emotions. He always acted distant, cold-hearted, and uncaring.

All he really wanted was to feel loved. But he had an image to portray; he couldn't seem _weak_. And he made sure everything he said and did portrayed his image of being distant, cold-hearted, uncaring. The actions were easier; they had turned into habit with years of practice. It was the words that he had to constantly work at. The actions were a part of who he was now; the words were an act.

His life was a masquerade of words.

"Hiei... please..." his rose whispered again. His bright green eyes, framed by long red bangs, sparkled in the moonlight like dewy leaves.

What struck Hiei was how sad his eyes looked, how desperate. And then he realized that _he_ was a masquerader, too – underneath it all, he was just like him: desperate to be loved.

Fire burns, consumes, destroys. But fire is not always the enemy. For some, it is their friend; it may burn and destroy, but it also provides warmth, light, and hope.

Hiei took a small breath to ready himself as he took the first step to end his lifelong masquerade.

And fire whispered to the rose, "I love you."

- Kuramastrass -


End file.
